2001
| January 1, 2001 I am a blue-ribbon bonnafied home-made bread baker. I have won blue ribbons for my loaves since the 1950's. We are talking nearly fifty years of bread-making experience. I have always made bread for Christmas. Sweet rolls, Stollen, cinnamon rings, braids, and twists. Falling out of coffee cans (traditional), on a cookie sheet, in an angel cake (for a ring effect) and whatever else I chose to do. I use recipes from cookbooks from different eras. Some of the best come from the early 1800's cookbook I have. I have made bread with kids running around at my knees, with loose rabbits, barking dogs, and bouncing cans of water chestnuts crashing through the kitchen window, having skittered off the frozen turkey on Thanksgiving morning. It had been "tossed" by my eldest. I have made it with parades blasting off the TV set and with a teenager snoring in his bedroom while Andy Williams played in the background. I have made it on one counter while my kids conspired over onions and garlic for the stuffing on another morning. I have not made it in a quiet empty house for nearly three decades. So today was to be different. Make a note that yesterday at the hospital I lifted my nearly 200-lbs son into the bathroom, then up and onto the shower chair, then up and back into bed yesterday. (He walked, I held him upright.) I woke up at 5 AM with a shoulder and neck and back that were busy declaring war since when I am "on the rag" as it were, I do not go stretch in the gym. I took about 2.5 mg Xanax (half dose) to calm the screaming muscles before they got too loud and went back to bed until 9 AM or so. At which point Ranger was going berserk, since he spends nights in the hall bath sleeping on the other bath chair while my son is not at home. He is in the bathroom because he will not stop scratching at my bedroom door. He is is the bathroom so often that he will scratch the door and when I open it - he will go into the bathroom all by himself. Strange cat. And I insist, mind you, on sleeping without interruption all through the night. He gets his claws trimmed tomorrow. Not that it will stop him of course. Catching Little Bitch is another matter. But she leaves my door alone. Although she is learning tricks from Ranger. A large net perhaps. I must get one. So I let Ranger out, threw the dog out (she hates the cold), blinked at a pretty day and dropped myself, coffee in hand, onto the couch to stare at the ends of 2-3 movies and mumble about things that I needed to do. I did not care. Xanax is like that. I did decide that I had better cook those chicken breasts I defrosted two days ago, and I did a nice job frying up onion and garlic and elephant garlic in oilve oil and then frying up the chicken. It was when I added the cut up tomatoes except that I forgot to turn down the heat. It's OK. I'll eat it anyway. I caught it before it cooked scorched tomatoes throughout the chicken. While contemplating the making of the chicken, I had started the bread. Real butter. Baker's Sugar. Sift the weavils out of the flour (three) and spray the cabinet again. This time I put garlic powder and bay leaves on the shelf. I will remember to close the tupperware lid to the flour. These are the little crawling things. Not the little red-dots like paprika things. There is a reason people used to store the spices in the cabinet with the flour - because bugs hate spices. Usually. Anyway, things were cool. I decided to actually heat the milk in a pan instead of in the microwave. Then I read that with powdered yeast I should dissolve it in water and reduce the milk. I was using the 1950's cookbook - not a newer one made for powdered yeast. I can't even find the little yeast squares I used to use. Heck - I just dumped the yeast in with the milk and sliced up the butter and let it melt. Pretty. I put in the sugar and flour and two eggs and beat it together with a whisk. I pounded the dough out on the wooden board. To rest and rise. I messed up the chicken. Played with finding a drop-off for UPS (Menlo Park!) and FedEx - and wondered why it is so hard to find out how to become a pick-up point for UPS., Or Fedex. I have three packages to mail - two of them books to Ingram. And I am not at work and I don't think shipping is open this week. Time to do it myself anyway. Well, the bread had not risen so I tucked it into the oven with the door ajar and the temp set at 190. And forgot it. Of course I had to scrape off a few pieces that had tried to cook - since I had forgotten to turn the oven back off (supposed to warm it then kill the heat). I pounded it into shape - and noticed that it had still not risen. Maybe it needed more time. I used butter and Baker's sugar and cinnamon and slivered almonds. I made rings. My older son wanted it. Well, hell will freeze over before these are going to rise! So, after an hour or so, I cooked them anyway. I needed a shower. I stuck my flour-dusted tee-shirt into the wash pile and set off to figure out what to wear. I took the bread out of the oven when it began to resemble a tire (turning dark). I sliced it. The consistency is of raw pie crust. It had not raised one iota. It just lay there. It had to have been that mis-step of putting the yeast into hot milk. Wrong move! The yeast was evidently not happy. I should have known this because I had seen no bubbles 15 minutes after adding it to the milk. Should have been a clue. I should have noticed. Yeast does not like to be too hot - the water was to be lukewarm. Yeast likes to be fed sugar and flour before drowning it in other liquid. I do know this. And the bread had never "felt" right. Or tasted right (I eat raw bread dough.) A cook should always trust the feel of the dough. Shortcuts are not a good thing to take when baking bread. Shouldn't cook while on Xanax. Should not operate heavy machinery. I'll have to get some more nuts and butter. I'll have to make some more bread tomorrow. When I give a damn! |
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